At the Taroko Gorge

Although we really enjoyed the nice and hot weather of the southern part of Taiwan, we were really looking forward to what our guide called the best part of the trip: The Taroko Gorge!

To get there in time we got up really early at 5:30 and took the train northwards to Hualien.

still a bit tired but very curious

At the park's entrance we took a lot of pictures of us with the entrance sign, but none of them was as charming as the one of the lady trying to sell us pictures of the gorge ;)

Look at the lovely cap!

The gorge is truly amazing. We only expected a small part of the gorge to be that narrow and scenic but in fact it seems to be several dozens of kilometers long and completely covered with rainforest. Even on the vertical cliffs trees can survive and create a stunning combination with the river below of bright blue and vivid green.

In front of the Gorge

What a scenery!!!

Nested on a step between the cliffs and the riverbed lies this monastery where we took a small rest. If we ever decide to become monk and nun, this would definitely be our place of choice ;)

In the middle of the mountains

What a calming and relaxing place for a rest between the exhausting mountain tracks...

Kathi relaxing at the monastery

Not too many tourists found their way up here but with good reason all of them took pictures of this huge buddha statue

Impressive Buddha in front of the monastery

Our guided tour was already nearly finished after two hours at the gorge. Whe had a very good lunch at a hotel close to the gorge and monastery and actually should head back to Taipei. But since it is such a great and scenic place we decided to stay! All of our tourgroup where clearly envious as we said that we are going to end the tour here and stay at this great place for the next two days!

So fantastic to take a bath at the hotel pool in the middle of this green wonderland.

Kathi in the rooftop pool

Franz at the rooftop pool

At night we took part in an aboriginal dance performance.

Great dancers

Quite hidden and hence not well known are the hotsprings inside the gorge. A tourgide in Taipei told us this is a must when being in Taroko and so we asked at the hotel's reception for the way.

To get there was not easy since we opted to go by bike in order to be able to really soak in the scenery. It turned out the road was a bit steeper than we thought...

Perfect for biking .... if you are a real pro only!

But eventually we made it, and it was definitely worth all the effort!!!

We in the gorge's hot spring pools

Finally made it! :)

And one last shot of the stunning mountains:

Great mountains

Coming from one of the most mountainous countries in the world, mountains elsewhere usually do not impress us much, but here the forests that completely cover even the steepest bit really make the difference.

From Taipei to Kenting

To experience Taiwan you have to go around the island since culture and climate changes quite a lot from north to south. So we went on tour again and were already curious about the tour guide and our fellow travellers.

The guide turned out to be very funny, although sometimes unintentionally because of his exaggerated carefulness. The group consists of 14 people from Malaysia, China and the US. That's great since it's always fun to have such a diverse international group!

The tour guide talked a lot about the country on the road making the trip interesting and we had a lot of fun getting to know the other groupmembers and talk with them.

Parts of our fun tourgroup

Our first destination was already one that we were looking forward to for a long time. The scenic sun moon lake.

But first we drove to a very nice restaurant on the way and had a very rich lunch with locally grown water bamboo dishes and interesting, very tasty, new and formally unknown dishes - great experience.

We arrived at sun moon lake and without much waiting directly hopped on a boat and drove to the island in the middle of the lake. What a beautiful scenery there, the small island is a popular wedding location, we can totally understand why it must attract a lot of young couples because of its beauty. Unfortunately we couldn't get on the island as it is very fragile after a major earthquake a couple of years ago.

Our boat - can you see the hello kitty on the top? ;)

Soon we drove on to a tao temple on the other side of the lake where I bought some betel nuts on the way since there was a lot of rumor about strengthening effects ;) I tried them and they are definitely NOT tasty, not sure on any of the promoted other effects though. Hard to believe that anybody can get addicted to it....

The following picture is interesting since we actually do not know the other people on it. Quite often when we walked around other people asked us to get on a picture with them, we wonder why and guess that not too many Europeans can be found around here so it seems we are a sight on its own :)

On a peninsular largely visible from most places around the lake is a beautiful pagoda which was our next stop. Up the hill leads a small path through dense jungle with absolutely amazing wildlife (butterflies, lizards, birds, ...). This spot would definitely be worth an episode on the discovery channel!

Particularly the lizards don't seem to be shy and even seemed to pose for pictures

Finally we climbed up the pagoda to ring its bell and enjoy the great view on such a beautiful day.

On top of the pagoda

In front of the pagoda together with our new friend from the US

As a last stop of the day we visited a large and impresisive confucius temple on the way back to the hotel.

Impressive temple guard

Really enjoyed the marvellous dinner at night at the hotel's terrace facing the lake!

On the hotel's terrace before leaving again in the morning

On the next day we headed further south to Kaohsiung where we visited the love river.

It turned out the "love" river got its name for marketing only since it is rather murky and stinky, the name is clearly misleading so we drove on quickly to get some food on the night market (which turned out to be the 1st market we've been to that is not just touristy, but already calls itself "tourist night market"). It was amazing, that nearly every stand offered some other kind of food. Sadly sometimes the food was still alive when being put on the grill :(

Day 6

Today's highlight: Kenting National Park! This is said to be a highlight on every Taiwan tour since Kenting offers a lot for every perfect holiday. Beaches, rainforest, diving, etc.

Park sign at the entrance

And it seems to keep up to what is promised...

Great coastline!

As said the climate here on the southest tip of Taiwan is different. Currently (it's April) we have already 31° Celsius! Hence many asians protect their bright skin from the sun using an umbrella.

Umbrellas help against the heat

Because it's so nice: again the coastline

That was the trip down to the south, currently we are already on the way up to the north again and will update soon!

 

Taipei and around

When we arrived at the airport our local organizer from Taiwan Tourism was already waiting for us to pick us up and directly transfer us to our first halfday tour. Meeting her in person after only knowing her from the travel arrangements was very nice and she made our trip very convenient, never have been on tour so fast before ;)

The tourguide however was not so happy about us since we were delaying the whole tour by 15 minutes and he had to rush over the first part (Chiang Kai Shek-memorial) in order to make it in time for the changing of the guards in front of the shrine of the unknown soldier.

Guards never blinked with the eyes, we closely observed this :)

After the tour we got invited to dinner by our organizer Ms. Lee at our hotel and talked about Peter "Akataki" ;) She seems to be a very busy woman but still managed to spend quite some time with us and tried everything to make our stay as comfortable as possible.

Day 2

tour to the north shores. Would have been great since the scenery is supposed to be really nice, but the weather was very rainy and with our tiny travel umbrella we were soon completely soaked. Our tourgide this time was very young and hardly able to speak english, we had a lot of fun trying to communicate with her using hands and feet ;)

To escape the rain for a while we visited a local fish market, which was somehow stunning and pittiful at the same time since there were many for us yet unknown species of fish and all alive.

Never seen this kind of mussles before for example, I wonder how their small shells should protect the whole body? Kathi would for sure not be too happy to find them in her dinner though.

At the next market they had very tasty almond milk (which Taiwanese people do NOT like a lot according to our guide) and frightening looking chicken wings and bones (which Taiwanese people DO like a lot according to our guide). One interesting local speciality is the so called "stinky tofu". The name is very well chosen since it smells like never cleaned casern latrines! Of course we had to try this!

Tasty but far too stinky

In the evening we got again! invited for dinner in a very very delicious dim sum restaurant just right under the Taipei 101 tower!

Yummiiee

Never had that good dim sums before! (sorry Valentin but the restaurant even received a Michelin star)

Day 3

On our third day in taipei we again tried a tour to the shores (this time to the east coast) in the pure hope it would not be raining all day again although the forecast and locals told us otherwise.

And in fact - we had very lovely weather for the whole day! The tour in total was a great experience, the guide was very motivated, very funny and very fluent in english. Took a lot of pictures of the beautifull scenery at the shore directly adjacent to the tropical rainforest, this is a true "formosa" island!

Joe the driver guide and Franz - see the amazing coastline in the background!

Visited a gold mine and a rebuilt japanese settlement building, first time to see a japanese home from the inside although we just came from a 2 weeks trip through Japan! And of course the enriching experience of touching a real(?) 220kg barrel of gold.

Kathi hiding nearly perfectly inside a lorrey of the gold mine (and catching a nice sunburn)

Taiwan is well known for its tea and tea culture. If you really want to enjoy tea the taiwanese way, you can not just soak the tea leaves for a while, there is a whole ceremony around the preparation of every cup of tea. That might sound complicated, but is in fact a very relaxing way of drinking tea. We had the chance to learn about this ceremony in a traditional tea house in Jioufen.

Back in Taipei we finally got nice weather to go up on the Taipei 101!

Currently the third tallest building in the world

That's us with the Taipei 101 mascot on the 91th floor of the building

 

 

 

Welcome to Taiwan

Ni hau

- and welcome to our blog about our travel to Taiwan!

We are a couple from Austria that really likes to travel especially in south-east asia, however how we got to Taiwan (which is certainly and without any reason somehow out of the path of most tourist routes) is a longer story, we might tell it here at some times.

We just came from Japan and are currently on tour in Taiwan, we are planning to update this blog regularely during our travels, so it might pay off to visit this site sometimes if you are interested in Taiwan and traveleing.

Our first picture of Taiwan already shows one of the most well known sights:

Taipei 101

Eine etwas andere Hochzeitsreise

Nachdem so viele nette Leute extra für unsere Hochzeit aus dem Ausland angereist sind, haben wir kurzerhand beschlossen, denen, die Österreich noch nicht so gut kennen, ein bisschen was von unserer schönen Heimat zu zeigen. (und somit selbst auch mal die Gelegenheit zu nützen, Österreich ein bisschen besser kennen zu lernen)

Also haben wir Ian (Singapur) und Johan (Schweden) ins Auto gepackt und auf gings zur ersten Station nach Grafenegg. 

Abgesehen davon, dass das Schloss wirklich schön ist, hat es auch einen super Park, um Leuten, die nicht schon als Kind viel im Grünen waren so einiges zu zeigen, was man so mit den Sachen, die um einen herum wachsen anstellen kann (von meinen heißgeliebten "Rühr-mich-nicht-an"-Pflanzen, über Juckpulverbällchen und Klettengeschoße bishin zu Pfeifgräsern und -nussschalen) Und wo in Österreich ein Park - da ist natürlich auch ein Cache versteckt.

Nach einem leckeren Apfelstrudel war unsere nächste Mission den beiden das Weinland Österreich vorzustellen und so ging's auf ins Kamptal zum Weingut Mauss, wo uns ein gut gelaunter Hausherr freundlich empfangen und die nächsten Stunden unterhalten hat.

Völlig ungläubig, wie günstig man bei uns Wein bekommt (in Singapur kostet die Flasche ungefähr das 10-fache) haben die zwei auch gleich ordentlich zugeschlagen. In der richtigen Stimmung für einen geselligen Abend ging's dann weiter zu einer richtigen Brettljaus'n beim Nachbarheurigen von Angie und Andreas, die uns netterweise wieder einmal für eine Nacht bei sich aufgenommen haben.

Am nächsten Tag haben wir versucht herauszufinden, warum Linz heuer Europas Kulturhauptstadt geworden ist. Nachdem der Versuch nicht soo erfolgreich war (Linzer Auge schwimmt noch immer nicht und im Ars Electronica hat auch die Hälfte nicht funktioniert), haben wir wenigstens einen Besuch beim Leberkas Pepi noch als Trumpf im Ärmel gehabt.

Frisch gestärkt ging's dann weiter Richtung Salzburg. Natürlich nicht ohne auf der schönsten Raststation Österreichs (zumindest in dem Österreich, das wir bisher kennengelernt haben) am Mondsee Station zu machen.

Und dann waren wir schon in Salzburg. Auch schön. Und diesmal auch ganz ohne Polizeifahndung nach mir. (leider aber auch ohne von Mitleid habenden Leuten gespendetem Eis :o( )

Nachdem die Sommerrodelbahn, auf die ich mich schon sooo gefreut habe, leider nicht offen gehabt hat, weil ein bisschen Nebel am Gipfel war, sind wir gleich weiter nach Werfen in die Eisriesenwelt. (man sieht es diesem Loch von außen nicht, an, aber das ist der Eingang zu einer 40km langen Eishöhle)

Auf der Berghütte hatten sie dann auch endlich das von Ian und Johan in bisher jedem Restaurant vergeblich gesuchte Stiegl-Bier, von dem ihnen Marcel in Wien so vorgeschwärmt hat.

Essentieller Bestandteil einer Österreich-Rundreise ist natürlich auch ein Besuch am Bauernhof. Und damit die beiden gleich mal so richtig ins Bauernleben (im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes) reinschnuppern können, haben wir auch gleich dort übernachtet. Netterweise hat uns beiden die Bäurin gleich ihre "Hochzeitssuite" überlassen, mit wunderschönem Ausblick über das ganze Tal:

Ian war so einiges suspekt auf diesem Bauernhof. Schade, dass wir kein Foto vom Blick des Bauern haben, als Ian ihn gefragt hat, ob das den Hennen nicht weh tut, wenn die Küken mit den Schnäbeln an ihren Zitzen hängen und Milch trinken... :D

Frisch gestärkt nach einem ausgiebigen Bio-Bauern-Frühstück ging's dann gleich ab auf die Salzach zum Rafting.

War wie man sieht echt actionreich und sicher das beste Rafting, das wir bisher hatten!

Zu Beginn der Reise wollte Ian noch unbedingt einen österreichischen Berg besteigen. Gegen Ende war dann die Motivation nicht mehr soo groß und so wir haben uns in Werfenweng kurzerhand in die Gondel geschmissen und dann immerhin die restlichen ca. 200m zum Gipfel  zu Fuß zurück gelegt. Für einen Singapurianer wohl noch immer ein ganz schöner Höhenunterschied ;o)

Und dann hieß es eh schon wieder ab nach Wien. 

Netterweise haben Ian und Johan uns vor Ihrer Abreise noch dabei geholfen, unser von sehr lieben Leuten vor der Hochzeitsnacht zerlegtes Bett wieder zusammen zu bauen, sodass die Aktion für die Zerleger bei geschätzt 40° im Dachstuhl sicherlich schlimmer war, als für uns. ;oP